Shifting into high gear for the party cooking. To try to keep myself sane, I made the meat curries in advance and froze them, so these are done:
– beef curry
– black pork curry
– tamarind shrimp
– lamb curry (mild)
I also made a big batch of coconut sambol. Next step, the veggie dishes (which are all incidentally vegan, which is easy to do with Sri Lankan cooking — just be sure to use oil instead of ghee, and don’t add in the tiny dried shrimp or Maldive fish that are sometimes added to veg dishes).
Yesterday I started off with eight bags of frozen chopped onions and sauteed then in my biggest sauté pan (which is very big) with oil, black mustard seed, cumin seed, cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon stick. That makes a great base for many of our dishes, and will make cooking for a party much faster.
So far, I’ve taken portions of those seasoned onions, and made the two curries that I can do in my sleep, devilled potatoes and sweet carrot curry (with a bit of heat from green chilies). The list of dishes I’m hoping to do is probably longer than I actually have time for, given I have to, you know, teach today, for example. But if I end up with extra seasoned onions, they freeze well, so can be stowed away for a hectic future day.
